At SMPTE this year, Ross’ founder John Ross was presented with a President’s Proclamation Award during the Conference. To celebrate they brought one of their first production switchers to the show – it was on the air for 41 years before retiring.

Seth Hallen, global strategy and business development at Pixelogic, is also president of the HPA (Hollywood Professionals Association). He talks to Dayna McCallum about the benefits of the HPA and the feeling of community that it brings.

Rod Bogart, who has held positions at Pixar, ILM and, most recently, HBO, was at SMPTE this year to collect the Kalmus Medal. This award is given to those who try to maintain artistic intent all the way to the consumer. Bogart was one of the developers of OpenEXR, which has helped HDR workflows. Here he talks about the technology and how it developed.

Siegfried Foessel is head of department for moving picture technology at Germany’s Fraunhofer IIS. He was at SMPTE chairing a session about the future of AR and VR, and how experiences can be enhanced by using LightField or volumetric capture technology… and by combining the technical and the creative.

Kari Grubin helped found Women in Post and Rachel Payne is CEO of Fem Inc. Payne has held positions at many tech companies over the years, including Google. She also ran for Congress! Listen to these inspirational ladies talk about how they help support women and minorities in technology.

Past SMPTE president Wendy Aylsworth — who retired from Warner Bros. after 23 years at the studio — started out as an aerospace engineer. Here she talks about how she started with SMPTE, how she was inspired by Women in Technology speaker Rachel Payne, and what’s she is doing now.

Atto’s Carllene Mowry talks about the company’s high-performance, low-latency connectivity for a variety of network and storage protocols. The products include Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, with the ability to connect multiple devices with similar platforms. Their 12GB SAS product was also on display.

Emotion Systems exhibited at SMPTE and showed simple, automated CALM and loudness compliance for broadcasters. Plus, they showed how post and playout facilities are automating audio processing – channel shuffling, pitch shifting and Dolby Digital Plus processing, which was new at the show.

Elements, a sponsor of the SMPTE conference this year, makes storage products featuring easy-to-use interfaces. They were at SMPTE with a prototype of a 2U NVMe-based storage appliance providing up to 20GB/sec., which allows multiple 8K RAW streams.

postPerspective’s Randi Altman caught up with Fox Sports Technical Director Pam Phelps at the Women in Technology lunch. She talks about the importance of having women mentors and being inspired by the event’s speakers.

Cinnafilm was at SMPTE this year showing PixelStrings, the cloud representation of all of the company’s image processing technologies.They charge based on resolution and video runtime, making this an affordable way to transcode in the cloud.

Framestore Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Mike McGee stopped by to talk to us about his SMPTE presentation and how the studio has evolved from traditional VFX work to creating content for all screens and experiences.

Renard Jenkins is an Eastern Region Governor for SMPTE as well as Vice President of PBS Operations, Engineering & Distribution. He talks about what Governors do, as well as the two sessions he chaired during the conference.

Technical Director and VP, Imaging Science at Efilm, Joachim “JZ” Zell is a SMPTE Hollywood Section Manager. Their mission is to get members to monthly meetings to discuss technology and standards, but also to get younger people involved. They offer a students’ program and talk about gaming, 360 as well as filmmaking.

Sim’s Jesse Korosi Greg Ciaccio stopped by to talk to us about what Sim is and what it does – dailies, post and lighting and grip. Greg is a Hollywood Manager for SMPTE and Jesse is a Chair of the Young Entertainment Professionals Committee with the HPA and were hosting a YEP day at SMPTE.

AlphaDogs is a Burbank-based post house and was the production and post crew for postPerspective Live at SMPTE 2018. We spoke with owner Terry Curren about his studio, their Editor’s Lounge events, as well as trends in the industry.

OWC was a sponsor of the SMPTE Conference as well as SMPTE’s Women in Technology lunch, which featured Fem Inc.’s Rachel Payne. OWC president Jen Soule talks about how Payne inspired her and also gives us an update on the company’s latest offerings.

The popularity of eSports will have a positive affect on the media & entertainment industry. It has almost all the elements as a live sports production but with the benefit of having a virtual arena. Much of the same gear is used.

First-time SMPTE exhibitors ASG are now putting more of a focus on M&E, offering big data storage as well as their new automation tool called AVA. This platform uses predictive analytics to help companies better manage their systems.

Teradek was at SMPTE demo-ing their new streaming technology that allows users to send two encoder feeds up to the cloud. If it detects the loss of video from the primary stream, it automatically moving everything over to the second stream without losing a frame.

Matrox was showing its IO technology, including a new 12G board, which allows 4K workflows over one 12G connection. Their technology is being used within products offerings from other SMPTE exhibitors like Ross and Viz.